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Mmm… the poster artwork looked alright; too bad the feature didn't draw out the same excitement. 'Demon of Paradise' isn't the complete pits, but for most part is quite an flatfooted cheapjack co-American/Philippines monster feature, which treads water for too long and then amusingly erupts in the unimaginative final quarter. Philippine exploitation director/producer Cirio H. Santiago ('Cover Girl Models', 'T.N.T. Jackson' and 'Naked Vengeance') manages to keep you fascinated, but I don't know how. Maybe it's those cheap looking explosions. Yeah it could be. Caused by no other than the creature? No really it's plain stupidity. I don't know why they want to destroy it. I could've sworn when it's bobbing out of the water it likes to wave (not clawing), asking to jump in so it can hug you to death. But wherever it is about, for some reason there's dynamite and then explosions seem to follow. Maybe the director was adding those bangs to wake-up the viewer from the miserable dialogue exchanges and mainly limp acting. One scene involving a helicopter and the creature efforts to get up close for a ride is embarrassingly shonky. No wonder why he went all out in the final twenty minutes, but this creature could've been mistaken for a machine since all of the punishment it encounters and still it doesn't bleed. Where's Arnold Schwarzenegger when you need him. But more than one grenade thrown at the same time will get you a result. BOOM!

Really there wasn't enough buzz. Everything here is a cut and paste job with the story lazily mixing 'Jaws (1975)' and 'Creature from the Black lagoon (1954)' together. The prehistoric underwater monster (formed by some superstitious groundwork) is a lousy looking rubber suit, and the rest of the make-up FX is quite tatty. Performances come across rather drab, but Laura Banks, Frederick Bailey and especially Leslie Scarborough kick up plenty of spruce. The music score was painful.

Pointless trite, but watchable.

Doyen of Philippine exploitation Cirio Santiago does a version of 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' (though closer in quality to 'Octaman' and the lead character is introduced as Dr Essex which seems too obvious to be coincidence) with this quaint action /horror where local folklore meets scaly reality when a swamp creature emerges from the depths to cause chaos on a small Hawaiian resort village.

The acting is variable, but the rubber lizard suit is really something to behold. Steis and Witt ('Tropic of Cancer') are decent in lead roles (local Sheriff and visiting herpetologist respectively) and along with Banks playing the selfish resort manager, the trio does a pretty good impersonation of 'Jaws' (there's also a 'Jaws 2' moment which you don't want to miss for pure ham value). Supporting actress Huntly is a minor highlight playing a busty model with a massive ego and a nose full of candy who dreams of making it in the movies.

As for the uncredited stuntman who gets to inhabit the Gillman suit, it's a thankless role which was never going to end well despite good intentions.

Not great, not awful, just mediocre with very mild gore, brief topless nudity, a couple of gunfights and a tonne of explosions shot on the grassy banks of an overcast Philippine river-bend.

Hunters become the hunted when illegal dynamite disturbs the age-old slumber of a carnivorous lizard-man. Resort owner Angela, joins forces with Sheriff Keefer to save tourists from the beast's path of death. This doesn't sound to bad, right? wrong. I am guilty of a crime many science fiction fans are guilty of. I call it "cool-box-syndrom". It's a common thing that happens, renting a movie because of a cool cover art. In this case, the cover showed a fanged reptile dragging a bathing beauty into the water.I was fooled. The monster looked nothing like the one on the cover. The plot was bad. The acting was ho-hum. The creature suit was mediocre. Some nice photography & locations, but that's not enough to make this sinker worth a renting. I now know to check with the Internet movie data base before I rent a film with good cover art.

One of my many personal defaults is that, for some incomprehensible reason, I desperately desire to see all the cheesy mutant sea/swamp monster movies ever made. Knowing that approximately 95% of those are incompetent and amateurish Z-grade trash productions, my obsession is actually the equivalent of cinematic self-torture! "Demon of Paradise" is another piece of rock-bottom, pretty much on par with notorious titles such as "Zaat", "Octaman", "Spawn of the Slithis", "Hydra", "Rana: Legend of Shadow Lake", "Monstroid" and "Up from the Depths". If none of these titles rings a bell, that means there still hope for you! Stay away from them as far as possible! "Demon of Paradise" takes place in a small Hawaiian fishing community, where the obnoxious villagers have been using so much illegal dynamite in their profession that it has awakened an ancient and very upset lizard monster. What follows is an incredibly boring and clichéd film with immeasurably long sequences where nothing happens and pseudo-intellectual dialogs that are irrelevant and senseless. The monster itself is reasonably good-looking, although it's another umpteenth attempt to imitate the appearance of the "Creature of the Black Lagoon", but it nearly doesn't receive enough screen time. Cirio H. Santiago produced and directed approximately 80 exploitation films in his life, all of them shamelessly cashing in on some trend that was popular and money-earning at some point. I've only seen a handful of his titles, but more than enough to declare him to be one of the worst directors who ever lived.

When I was a teenager I used to watch a lot of Cirio Santiago's war/action flicks like "Equalizer 2000","Nam Angels" or "Last Stand at Lang Mei".His cheaply made but highly energetic movies were popular during VHS revolution in Poland."Demon of Paradise" tells the story of Hawaiian fishing community terrorized by a man sized amphibious monster.I consider myself very tolerant when it comes to rating and reviewing Z-grade trash,unfortunately "Demon of Paradise" is simply dull.There is no gore and the bloodless killings are mostly off-screen.Admittedly Hawaiian landscapes are beautiful and the music is fine,but "Demon of Paradise" is a misfire.4 out of 10 for this low-budget monster dud.

Someone wakes me up when something starts happening. Other

than Kathryn Witt's form fitting 80's jeans I see no reason to bother

with this stinker. Seems to have been fashioned as an excuse to

shoot a bunch of footage with one of those helicopter engine

pontoon swamp boats & discussion scenes at a Hawaiian tourist

resort during an off-season winter lull. I also love how the

hero/heroine are thrown out of the resort one scene & the next

they go back to have a drink. THEN they get thrown out again, and

are back four scenes later since that was the best set they had.

I love low budget horror trash as much as anyone else, but

something ought to happen every once in a while, and if you are

going to have an attractive woman play a herpatologist in a horror

film she had better be seen at least topless & getting far more out

of her career than she bargained on, or you have blown it.

As for the monster suit, heh, I thought it was kind of fun to see

someone not even bother to make something that looked "realistic" -- Kind of like Lamberto Bava's MONSTER SHARK, but

without any point to it & lacking that movie's ridiculous

entertainment value.

Best line: "It takes two to mate." [Flushing sound]

Dynamite used for illegal fishing awakens a man-like lizard creature on a Hawaiian island, which draws the attention of the local sheriff (William Steis) and a marine biologist (Kathryn Witt). A resort owner (Laura Banks) takes advantage of the region's mythological monster to attract business, but the situation turns horrific when bodies mount up.

"Demon of Paradise" (1987) is a creature feature that mixes the basic plot of "Jaws" (1975) with "The Great Alligator" (1979) and "Gargoyles" (1972). The helicopter scene from "Jaws 2" (1978) is ripped off, but is sophomoric by comparison. Some have called it an unacknowledged Filipino remake of "Up from the Depths" (1979) by the producer of that movie, Cirio H. Santiago, albeit with a different monster.

While the events purportedly take place in Hawaii, the scenery appears like the Philippines and the natives look like Filipinos, obviously because that's where it was shot. If you can get past that and the low-rent opening credits, this is a decent creature feature with a relatively unique-looking monster. I was expecting something more along the lines of the Gill-Man from "Creature of the Black Lagoon" (1954) or the creatures from "Humanoids of the Deep" (1980), and there's a little of that, of course, but it's different enough and effective enough.

The sheriff and marine biologist make for stalwart and likable protagonists, but they're offset by the shrill Banks (the resort owner) and the trying-too-hard to be "comedic" Frederick Bailey. Meanwhile the beauty department is limited to the too-thin tall blonde Leslie Scarborough.

The film runs 1 hour, 27 minutes.

GRADE: C

This is another boring low budget horror/monster movie. The video box art is quite cool (as usual) but the film itself is far too dull. The monster is a guy in a rubber suit, which usually would give you laughs due to the cheese factor, but sadly the monster isn't shown nearly enough to be entertaining. There's no gore nor suspense to be had either. The acting ranges from OK to terrible.

Demon of Paradise reminds me of another horror flick in a similar vein called The Evil Below, which is equally as boring. All horror fans will want to avoid both of these films - all they're good for are the VHS covers.

A quick Summary of this film: A Green Fish like Monster takes a liking to eating people 0n the Paradise island of Hawaii.

With the low budget and poor acting the only watchable aspects about this film are the scenes showing the Wildlife and the Island. I managed to watch the whole film on my Film philosophy that it can only get better, Unfortuantly it Didn't!

Why i gave it 2/10 instead of 1/10 shows the quality of films i have seen in my life time.

I would say avoid but make your own mind up....

Next

This is the seventh film I've seen by Filipino director Cirio H. Santiago; of the previous six, I've only rated one higher than 4/10 (the gloriously daft Future Hunters). Demon of Paradise does nothing to raise my average rating for Santiago's movies.

Set in Hawaii, but most likely filmed in the Philippines, the film is an aquatic B-movie creature feature that features one of the worst man-in-a-rubber-suit monsters I've seen - not quite Zaat or Octaman bad, but still more likely to elicit laughs rather than screams of fear. Not that we get to see much of the 'demon', the majority of the film revolving around the human characters, with only the briefest glimpses of the monster as it pokes its ridiculous looking head out of the water looking for victims.

A carnivorous humanoid reptile from the Triassic period, Akua (as the locals call it) is woken from hibernation by hunters using dynamite to fish the waters of a lake. Herpetologist Annie (Kathryn Witt) hopes to catch the creature alive so that she can study it, but local cop Keefer (William Steis) wants it dead before it kills any more people, in particular the guests at the local resort owned by Cahill (Laura Banks), who has used the rumours of a legendary lizard monster to bring in more business.

With plenty of scope for exploitative fun, this should have been a corker - a Filipino Humanoids From The Deep - but Santiago's dull direction, the tedious talky script, the risible creature, and not nearly enough gore and nudity all go to make this film quite the snooze-fest for most of the time. We get a total of two mauled bodies (mediocre make-up), only one pair of breasts (courtesy of Leslie Scarborough as coke-snorting glamour model Gabby), and the hilarious sight of Akua leaping into the air to pull a helicopter into the water (just how much does that creature weigh?) - I expected more.

The awful ending sees the apparently bullet-proof monster finally being blown to pieces by hand-grenades, with Annie remarking ominously to Keefer, 'You ever pull the tail off a lizard?'. Sure, Annie, but I've never seen a lizard put itself back together after being reduced to bloody chunks by high explosives.

3/10.

Of course I had never even heard about this 1987 horror movie titled "Demon of Paradise" from director Cirio H. Santiago, prior to stumbling upon it by blind luck here in 2024. And with it being a horror movie that I hadn't seen, much less heard about, of course I had to check it out.

The storyline felt somewhat erratic and a bit incoherent. Sure, there was a plot to it, but it just felt like director Cirio H. Santiago was taking a lot of detours to show random things that really didn't do much to further the narrative of the movie. And for a movie about a creature terrorizing a tourist location, there wasn't actually a whole lot of creature footage in the movie.

Writers Frederick Bailey and C. J. Santiago just didn't manage to deliver a particularly impressive script or storyline here for director Cirio H. Santiago to bring to the screen.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list.

The movie is supposed to be taking place on Hawaii, but it is filmed in the Philippines, and it just looks nothing like Hawaii. And that just made the entire movie feel sort of very staged and difficult to delve into, because you don't believe it to be Hawaii for even a split second.

I found the movie to not be worth spending 87 minutes on watching. The movie just doesn't have any particular entertainment value to it, not today and I doubt it even did so back in 1987.

My rating of "Demon of Paradise" lands on a generous three out of ten stars, given mostly because of the production value raising the score up a notch.

Cirio H. Santiago's Demon of Paradise is a cold, gritty film which draws parallels with the then imminent cold war. At first glance this masterpiece may be seen as a simple monster flick, such as Jaws or Godzilla. However if studied closely the immersive story and fast pace make this film a modern classic.

Set in the idealic Kihono, Hawaii which gives a great locale for the gripping story. Along with the great location a great cast appear. One shining example of this is from the late William Steins who gives a chilling earthy realism to his acting. The special effects bring the carnivorous lizard-man to life, you can truly see the rage within him. Of course the carnivorous lizard-man connotes the soviet rule. Where communism is here to wreak havoc with capitalism. Not only is this film a monster flick, it is a political point of view.

Edward Achacoso's musical score adds to the suspense of the film with its synthesised instruments which give the film a sense of un-easiness. The score is up there with others such as Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Cirio H. Santiago's Direction gives this film a fast pace with an intelligent storyline, which makes great viewing.

I give this film 9 stars.

Geez another man fish is loose . This is a bad one and very predictable. Made in 1987 the rubber suited monster is laughable and bulletproof it seems . The plot is like jaws not surprising. This time it's a pretty blonde who owns a resort hotel . Instead of the mayor Vaughn in jaws . I believe this was so bad that Roger Corman wasn't listed in the credits . Although made by new horizons Concorde his company . The characters are one dimensional. There's a few topless scenes. And the monster looks like a bad Halloween costume from Kmart . The poster looks better than the movie . As usual . As a jaws ripoff it stinks . It's about 90 some minutes I'll never get back . What a stinker.